大象传媒

I was a bit young really to remeber much about the Second World War before 1943 when I was six. Certainly I was aware of the bombing which, at that time, was happening most nights. Living in North London we missed the worst of the damage, but we heard the bombing and felt the windows rattle. All our windows were taped across corner to corner, to minimise any flying glass, and at night they had to be "blacked out" with close fitting black drapes to avoid any light excaping.

North Middlesex Hospital received a direct hit one night, just a mile from our house and an unexploded bomb made a large hole in the school playing field which was over the fence at the bottom of our garden. Each morning after an air raid I would go up our street, before going to school, collecting shrapnel and legths of radar deflecting tape dropped by the enemy planes.

Early in the war the council workers came around and took away all the steel and iron garden railings from the houses. They took the iron railings from Pymmes Park but left the school railings at the rear of our house. They were required for the war effort.

We had an "Anderson" shelter dug into the ground at the bottom of our garden and whenever there was an air-raid warning, my mother would gather us up with some blankets and we would hurry down the garden and spend the rest of the night in the freezing cold of the shelter. We did have an "Aladdin" paraffin stove, but with only a loose canvas sheet covering the doorway it wasn't too effective. After a couple of months of this discomfort my mother decided to abandon the shelter and we took our chances, warm in our beds. Later we were issued with the indoor "Morrison" shelter. This was like a six foot by four foot steel-framed table with a steel top and mesh undersides. The workmen set this up in the front room downstairs and my two sisters and I slept under it every night, while there was still a risk of bombing raids, just in case.

In 1944 I was evacuated along with a neighbour's boy to Aberdare in South Wales, but we were only there for two weeks as he was homesick. I, along with one of my sisters, was sent to my farther's brothers family in New Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where we staid for six months.

On the whole, as a child, I have to say I found the whole war experience to be quite exciting.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.